Education Quote by Kofi Annan

Annan’s line reads like a neat staircase: knowledge, information, education - each step wider than the last, each one moving from the individual to the collective. “Knowledge is power” borrows the old Baconian creed, but Annan immediately tweaks it: power alone can sound like domination, so he pairs it with “information is liberating,” shifting the moral center from control to freedom. It’s a rhetorical pivot that reflects his UN-era pragmatism: the real enemy isn’t ignorance in the abstract, it’s the way gatekept facts and unequal schooling lock whole populations out of economic and political life.

The repetition in “in every society, in every family” is doing quiet work. Annan doesn’t let education remain a technocratic policy goal; he drags it into the most intimate unit of belonging. That’s subtext with teeth: states can sign development goals and still fail their citizens, but families feel the consequences immediately - who gets to read, who gets to stay in school, who is forced into early work, who is deemed “not worth” investment. The premise of progress isn’t just budgets; it’s norms.

Context matters: coming from a UN secretary-general shaped by post-Cold War optimism and the hard arithmetic of failed states, the quote is both idealist and strategic. It frames education as a universal lever that doesn’t require conquest, only commitment - a form of soft power meant to outlast leaders, ideologies, and headlines.